Outline Lecture Nine—Imperialism and the Crisis of Capitalism
Key Focus:
1) Relationship between imperialism and capitalism
2) The economic imperatives behind imperialism
3) Relevance for understanding today’s global political economy
I) “Creating A World After Its Own Image”
a) Marx’s Anticipation of a Transnational Bourgeois Class
i) Tearing down traditional barriers
ii) Interactions based on “naked self-interest” and “cash payments”
b) Asymmetrical interdependence within a globalized economy
i) Non-industrial countries provide cheap raw materials
ii) Industrial, capitalist countries provide manufactured goods and “modern” services
and amenities
iii) Impact on Industrialized societies vs. impact on non-industrialized societies
(1) “International or geographic division of labor”
c) Hobson’s Imperialism (1902): Imperialism as a Response to Capitalist Crisis
i) The new dilemma of too much wealth
ii) Need to invest in production and secure markets overseas
iii) The pressures of cut-throat global competition
(1) Gradual shifts in Britain’s economic supremacy
(2) After 1870, maturation of fledgling economies
(3) Impact of protectionism
iv) Imperialism as recourse to crisis
(1) Full-fledged support of state resources in the “race to partition world”
(2) Imperialism vs. colonialism
(a) Competition as a game of attrition
v) Imperialism and Conflict
(1) Imperialism as alternative to civil war
(a) Cecil Rhodes on imperialism as a “bread and butter question”
(2) Imperialism as a catalyst to world conflict
(a) Hobson’s warning in 1902
II) The Rationale for Imperialism
a) A Costly and Dirty Business
i) Expansion of the British Empire
ii) Costs to British society
b) National Security
i) The “geopolitical” angle
(1) Control vital sea-lanes, rivers and land routes
(2) Control over telecommunications
ii) The “nationalism” angle
(1) “The sun will never set on the British Empire!”
(2) “Nationalism” became the handmaiden of capitalism
c) “The White Man’s Burden”—The “Cultural” Argument
i) 1899 Kipling poem
(1) “Take up the White Man’s burden/ No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper—/ The tale of common things.
ii) “The Civilizing Mission”
(1) Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902)
(a) “We are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit, the
better it is for the human race”